Woman accused of being Florida ‘killer clown’ pleads guilty. She’ll be out by 2026
For almost 33 years, Sheila Keen-Warren insisted she wasn’t the murderer who dressed as a clown and shot Marlene Warren in the face on Memorial Day Weekend 1990.
Keen-Warren’s story never changed even as she married Warren’s widowed husband, Michael Warren, in 2002 — and when Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office detectives arrested her in 2017.
Legally, that changed on Tuesday, when Keen-Warren, 59, changed her plea to guilty to a charge of second-degree murder.
“Thirty-three years after the murder of Marlene Warren, today we have obtained a measure of justice with the conviction and sentencing of her killer,” Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said in an emailed statement. “After years of professing her innocence, Sheila Keen-Warren has finally been forced to admit that she was the one who dressed as a clown and took the life of an innocent victim. She will be a convicted murderer for the rest of her days.”
With what court documents say is an agreed-upon 12-year sentence, and given credit for 2,039 days (just over 5 1/2 years) in Palm Beach County Jail, Keen-Warren likely will be out of prison by the end of 2025.
READ MORE: A killer clown shot a woman to death. An arrest has been made 27 years later
Keen-Warren’s defense attorney, West Palm Beach’s Greg Rosenfeld, gave a pragmatic description to the change of plea.
“Ms. Keen-Warren was facing 25 years to life. The state offered her 12 years,” Rosenfeld said in an email to the Miami Herald. “With gain time, which is calculated based on the law in 1990, she’ll be released in 16-18 months. While she was certainly hesitant to plea because she’s innocent, it was too good of an offer to turn down.
“Needless to say, it’s a huge win for Ms. Keen-Warren.”
To convict Keen-Warren, prosecutors would’ve had to make a beyond-reasonable-doubt case 33 years after the murder.
“The decision to negotiate a guilty plea was made after considering the age of this 33-year-old case, particularly the death of key witnesses,” Aronberg said. “For example, the death of the lead crime scene investigator broke the chain of custody for critical evidence that could no longer be authenticated.”
Aronberg said Marlene Warren’s son, Joe Ahrens, approved the plea terms. Ahrens told Palm Beach NBC affiliate WPTV via Zoom that “I didn’t see any remorse, and that’s all I have to say,” although he did also say of Keen-Warren, “God be with her.”
Deadly clown and flowers
Ahrens was 22 and sitting at the breakfast table with his friends and his mother when someone dressed as a clown rolled up to their Wellington home in the 15400 block of Takeoff Place on May 26, 1990. The clown got out of a Chrysler LeBaron and, when Marlene Warren answered a knock, offered Warren flowers.
As Warren took the flowers, the clown shot her in the face. She died two days later.
Marlene Warren is the only one on the state paperwork for West Palm Beach’s Bargain Motors, but she owned it and a rental car agency with husband, Michael Warren. Michael was a regular customer of Sheila Keen and estranged husband Richard Keen, who ran a car repossession business.
Witnesses at a costume shop gave a tentative identification of Sheila Keen as buying a clown costume two days before Warren was shot. Also, Publix employees told investigators a woman fitting Keen’s description bought flowers and balloons 90 minutes before the murder.
Detectives told the public all along that Keen and Michael Warren were their lead suspects.
Warren did prison time from March 1994 to December 1997, but for convictions on racketeering, grand theft and odometer tampering charges. He called it selective prosecution by a state attorney’s office that felt he hadn’t helped enough in finding his wife’s killer.
Marlene Warren’s murder investigation turned cold.
Michael Warren and Sheila Keen married in 2002. Investigators learned about that and the restaurant Warren and Keen-Warren operated in Kingsport, Tennessee (The Purple Cow) when the PBSO’s cold case unit reopened the investigation in 2014.
While witnesses and memories were now 24 years old, DNA analysis of hairs and fibers left behind in the Chrysler LeBaron was new. A grand jury indicted Keen-Warren on a first-degree murder charge on Aug. 31, 2017. Keen-Warren was arrested on Sept. 26, 2017 in Virginia’s Washington County, where she owned a home about a 50-minute drive from Kingsport.
Michael Warren proclaimed his wife’s innocence to the reporters talking to him for a 2017 episode of the ABC-TV newsmagazine “20/20” on the murder investigation.
